Christi Birchfield

Christi Birchfield

Christi Birchfield considers printmaking in an expansive way. Her works incorporate drawing, collage, and other forms of mark making, including burning and cutting. Organic material plays a central role in her practice, and she often uses cut flowers and vegetation in her work.

Most recently, Birchfield has started creating large-scale sculptures. Starting with black canvas, she applies gestural lines of bleach paste, folds the fabric in half, and runs it through a printing press. Next, she uses a utility knife to cut out areas of un-bleached fabric. These flat, lacelike shapes are conjoined, layered, stretched, and affixed to the ceiling, wall, and floor. The final forms resemble hanging skin and skeletal systems, evoking the body and its transience.

Christi Birchfield (1983, Cleveland, OH), earned her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2006 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2010. Selected solo exhibitions include Above the Fold, Below the Surface, Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University, Adrian, MI; From the Inside Out, William Busta Gallery, Cleveland (both 2014); and It’s all Yours: Posture Pointers to Make you Prettier, SPACES Gallery, Cleveland, OH (2012). Her work is part of the permanent print and drawing collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and the Westin Hotel. Birchfield is a full-time Visiting Artist/Lecturer at the Cleveland Institute of Art.